


What Time Is It?

by SingingInTheRaiin



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Anger, Established Relationship, Frustration, Gen, Kidnapping, M/M, Magic, Plot Twist, Stockholm Syndrome, Teleportation, Torture, after the first Avengers era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-28
Updated: 2019-04-28
Packaged: 2020-02-08 15:05:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18625684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SingingInTheRaiin/pseuds/SingingInTheRaiin
Summary: Loki returns home to find that Tony has gone missing and will do anything to get him back.Tony wakes up imprisoned by a mysterious stranger, and will do anything to get out.





	What Time Is It?

Loki returned to the tower after a business trip that had ended up taking much longer than expected. He’d promised that he’d only be gone for a week, but it was bordering on three now, and he was just glad to be home. He paused before stepping into the penthouse bedroom. Home? Since when had he thought of this place as that? 

Well, maybe the answer to that wasn’t all that complicated. It wasn’t the building itself that was home, but his life with Tony here. Thinking of the brilliantly stupid mortal made Loki’s stomach flutter in ways that made him feel weak, but not entirely unhappy to feel that way. He continued into the bedroom, ready to pull out the gift he’d brought back as a way of appeasing Tony. 

The room was empty, though, and the bed was made just as neatly as it had been when Loki had left. Since Loki was the only one of the two of them who ever actually bothered to make the bed, that told Loki that Tony hadn’t even slept in this room the entire time Loki had been gone. 

That mortal really was so foolish. He teleported down to Tony’s workshop, expecting to find the man there, either working himself into an exhaustion, or passed out on the small cot that was kept down there. But the workshop was dark, and there was no sign of life in there. “Jarvis, where is your master?”

There was no response, which was immediately worrying to Loki. Tony’s invisible servant was always there, but right now he was completely silent, and Loki quickly teleported into every floor of the tower just to confirm what the sinking feeling in his stomach was already telling him. Tony was nowhere to be found.

,,,

Tony groaned quietly as he slowly returned to consciousness, and then he blinked a looked around the room he was in. It was barely big enough for the mattress that Tony was lying on top of, and there was only a single dinky lightbulb hanging above him. He tried standing up, but the space wasn’t tall enough for that, so he settled back down on the mattress to try and figure out what the hell was going on, and how the hell he could get out of it in one piece. 

He needed to make a list of facts. The most obvious thing being that he was nowhere in the tower. He seemed to be in a large closet, and there were small round holes higher up on the walls that were perfectly level with each other, maybe where a bar had been to hold clothes hangers. Tony kicked at the closed doors, but they didn’t budge. Either it was locked or there was something strong blocking it off. He didn’t bother shouting, because obviously someone wouldn’t have kidnapped him if they had any interest in helping him, and it seemed wiser to save his energy.

Perhaps the most telling thing of all about this situation was the fact that he was not restrained in any way. Did that mean his captor was really so confident that they would be able to overpower him? It was a bit insulting, to be honest. He was Tony frickin’ Stark, and he could kick anyone’s ass (even if he hadn’t kept up on his self-defense training since he’d graduated college).

Tony was still wearing the same suit as before. The only thing that was different now was that his shoes and the pens in his breast pocket had been taken. And those were damn expensive things, too. He looked at his watch to check the time. Either it had only been two hours since his memories became blurry and confusing, or he had been unconscious for over a day. 

Since there wasn’t really anything else to do, Tony shifted to lie down again, reaching up to rest the back of his head on his hands, and stared up at the blank ceiling. A couple more hours passed before his stomach started growling loudly. For most people, that would confirm that it had only been a few hours since they’d been taken, but considering how long Tony could sometimes go without eating when he was on an engineering binge, it wasn’t all that helpful.

Eventually, there was knock on the closet doors, and an unfamiliar voice spoke. “I am assuming that you would like food and water. You will only be able to obtain those things if you cooperate. I can put you back to sleep, but it will leave you with a rather nasty headache that I’m sure you would prefer to not deal with, and I would prefer to leave you awake. Move into the far left corner of the room and close your eyes.”

“Sure thing,” Tony agreed easily enough. Then he slowly stood up, and stood in front of the doors, waiting for them to be pulled open so that he could spring free and make a run for it.

There was a snort from the other side. “And here I thought that we might be able to get along. Don’t worry, Stark, I will not leave you to starve. Not this time, anyways. I will put you to sleep myself. And the next time I come to offer sustenance, I can only hope that you will be more willing to play nice.”

,,,

Loki found the other Avengers in the tower on their respective floors, and he quickly scooped them all up to bring them to the common floor for an impromptu team meeting. Natasha gave him an unamused look, while the others all took a few seconds to settle down after the abrupt transportation. “What’s going on?” Steve asked first, breaking the awkward silence. 

“When is the last time any of you saw Tony?” Loki demanded immediately. “Because a thorough search of the tower has yielded no results, and Jarvis appears to be inactive at the moment.”

Natasha narrowed her eyes. “Jarvis, where is Tony?” There was no response for her either, and the Avengers all looked at each other with wide eyes. 

Bruce cleared his throat as he stood in the corner of the room, awkwardly fidgeting with his hands. “The last time I saw him was probably Friday afternoon. We went on a week long binge together, but I had to draw the line somewhere and actually get some decent rest and food.”

“Has anyone seen Tony more recently than Friday?” Loki asked in a cold voice. He couldn’t believe that these so-called heroes would let one of their own be taken away right from underneath their very noses, and it made him want to fling all of them into the endless void of space. 

Everyone took a moment to think back, and then Thor spoke up. “I saw him two days ago, brother. He showed me how to make the world’s best cup of coffee before retreating back to his lab.”

“When’s the last time anyone remembers hearing Jarvis?” Natasha asked suddenly. “I would think that his silence would be related to Tony’s disappearance.”

The fact that everyone had to actually think about it made Loki have at least a little bit of faith in humanity, since it meant that they didn’t need to rely on Jarvis to solve every single problem they encountered. But right now, he couldn’t care less about humanity, because Tony was missing and Loki had no idea where to even begin searching for him. 

By the end of the team meeting, all of the Avengers had agreed to begin looking for Tony right away, using whatever resources they could, even if Jarvis wasn’t available to them at the moment. None of them wanted to risk messing around with Tony’s work, afraid of damaging Jarvis more than they would fix him. This was one of the many times Loki wished that Tony had let him integrate magic into some of his science, because it would give him a way to diagnose Jarvis without needing to understand all of the coding.

But there was no point in being upset about what they hadn’t done in the past. Instead, Loki just needed to focus everything he had on making sure that Tony was recovered, and that he was safe and well. And if that wasn’t the case, then Loki was perfectly willing to tear this world to shreds.

,,,

Maybe Tony really should consider cooperating with his captor next time. He woke up with a splitting headache, and he couldn’t even recall any kind of gas or other substance being used to knock him out. He wasn’t sure what that meant, but it saddened him to think that maybe his captor was right about thinking that they could easily overpower Tony even with all of his limbs free.

So maybe they’d given the right estimation of Tony’s physical strength, but everyone underestimated Tony’s brain. It was thanks to that playboy reputation of his. For some reason, everyone seemed to assume that smart guys would be too lame to get laid, or something like that. Actually, Tony had no idea why sleeping with every hot guy and gal he came across made people think he was an idiot, especially when he was running his own company and had built the world’s first completely functional AI. And of course there was the part where he graduated from MIT at just sixteen years old. But somehow the sex seemed to outweigh all of that.

Most of the time, Tony liked it that way. Being underestimated made it so much more fun when he proved that he was more than capable of beating whoever it was that he was up against. Presumably his shoes and pens had been taken so that they couldn’t be used as weapons, because if it was about the money, then it wouldn’t make any sense to leave the clearly expensive watch on his wrist.

Which meant that his captor didn’t realize how much an engineering genius could do with just a watch. He unclasped it and held it in his hands. It was worth a lot of money, but held no sentimental value. He had ten others just like it at home, and enough money to buy as many more as he wanted. Now the only trick was to figure out just what he was going to do with the advantage that had been left for him.

,,,

Without Jarvis functioning, it had been more difficult to track down the numbers they needed. Natasha had Pepper’s phone number from when she’d gone undercover as Tony’s assistant at one point, but none of the Avengers knew how to get into contact with Rhodey, and they ended up having to go through a few different Shield agents before getting a useful answer.

They all gathered around as they called up Pepper, all of them hoping that she would have some reasonable explanation for everything, while also being fully aware that that wasn’t very likely. Pepper answered the call, looking as perfectly put together as ever. “Is there something I can help you all with?”

“Do you know where Tony is?”

Pepper blinked a couple of times. “I don’t exactly have a tracker embedded in his arm, as good an idea as that seems at times. What’s this about? Did he skip out on a training session or something?”

Loki scowled. “Nobody has seen him since Saturday morning, and Jarvis has been disabled.”

Pepper’s eyes widened, and she took in a small gasp. “Why is this the first I’m hearing about this? No, nevermind. I can chastise all of you later, once Tony has been recovered and brought home. But make no mistake that I am very angry with all of you right now.” She hung up without another word, leaving the Avengers to all stare at the little phone screen in something resembling shock. Steve muttered something that sounded like ‘hell of a woman’, but that was about all anybody had to say on the matter.

As much as Loki hated Pepper at times, mostly because he just couldn’t help seeing her as a romantic rival, he had to admit that at times like this, he was glad that she was on Tony’s side. He needed everyone possible to be out there looking for his human, and Pepper was definitely not going to stop until she found her best friend. It was good, because Loki wasn’t going to stop either. Not until he had Tony safely tucked away in bed, preferably with the door locked so that they could go at least one entire night without the genius getting himself into some kind of trouble or another.

,,,

Tony swore under his breath as one of the sharp springs from the watch scraped under his fingernail, and he stuck his finger into his mouth to suck on it for a moment. Then he looked back down at the watch. Disassembling this thing was a lot more difficult with his bare hands than with the proper tools, or even a good old screwdriver. He snorted to himself as he wondered what would happen if he asked his captor for a screwdriver. He could even promise that he wouldn’t use it as a weapon.

“What is so amusing?”

The voice came so suddenly that Tony couldn’t help jumping somewhat in surprise. He hadn’t heard any footsteps at all. Even if there was a carpet out there, he should have heard something. A door opening and closing somewhere, or even the slightest shuffling of feet against the floor, or something. “You’re going to give me a heart attack if you keep sneaking up on me like that.”

“My apologies.” The jerk sounded too amused to actually be sorry, and Tony hated it. Not because it sounded condescending, but because it sounded almost like the way friends tended to tease each other, and he did not want this asshole to think that they were friends just because he was forced to spend time with him. 

Tony pulled off his suit jacket to drop it carelessly on top of the pile of watch parts. It sucked, but it’s not like he had any better place to hide them. “So are you here to feed me again? I don’t even remember eating last time.”

“You didn’t,” his captor said in a casual voice. “You were asleep due to your own lack of cooperation, so I made sure that you were nourished. But like I said before, I will not be giving you any food each time you refuse to cooperate in the future.”

It didn’t take much considering. Tony needed to get this guy’s guard down so that he could figure out the perfect time to plan his escape, and he needed to be at full energy to be able to do that. Also, if he was eating and drinking real food, he’d have to use the bathroom at some point, and he really hoped that his captor wasn’t going to leave him stuck inside the closet to humiliate himself. “In in the corner with my eyes closed, right?” 

There was a low chuckle. “Ah, and so he proves that the title of genius is not for nothing.”

Tony rolled his eyes as he shuffled into the corner, and pressed his back up against the wall. There was no way he was leaving his back towards a threat, even if it was one that he wouldn’t be able to see either way. He debated leaving his eyes open, but then decided that it wasn’t worth it just for a small glimpse of who had him. So he closed his eyes, and took in a few deep breaths, waiting patiently.

He didn’t hear the sound of the doors opening, but suddenly he could smell something delicious right beneath his nose, and he opened his eyes in surprise. There was a paper plate of pasta in front of him, along with a solid plastic spork. There was a disposable plastic water bottle next to it. “How the hell…?”

“Eat up, Mr. Stark. You will need your strength.”

Tony frowned, and peered up at the door. “For what? I’ve been here for at least two days already, and you still haven’t told me why I’m here. Isn’t there supposed to be some kind of evil villain monologue? Or did you take photos of me for the ransom note while I was unconscious?”

There was a pause, and then some actual laughter. “I have no need for your money, Stark. Your wealth is meaningless to me. And I am not some ‘evil villain’, and I have no wish to spoil any plans a moment sooner than I intend.” There was no sound of receding footsteps, but somehow Tony could tell that the man had left. 

He chowed down on his meal, and then shoved aside his jacket so that he could get back to work. Whatever it was that his captor thought he needed his strength for, Tony didn’t want any part of it.

,,,

Loki tore down every punching bag in the room, but he didn’t feel any better than he had a few minutes ago, and he turned to look at Steve accusingly. “That was not cathartic at all.”

Steve shrugged as he grabbed a broom to start sweeping up all of the spilled sand. “Well I never said that the point of it was to cause as much destruction as possible.”

Loki narrowed his eyes, hating it as much as he always did when he came across a concept that he didn’t quite understand. “I pretended that the bags were Tony’s kidnappers, just as you had told me to do, and I destroyed them, just as I would if I were faced with them right now. It has been two entire weeks and there has been no sign of him anywhere. Did you really think that this was going to make me forget that my- that Tony is still missing?”

A few years ago, seeing Loki get increasingly angrier and angrier would be a cause for fear in a mere mortal. But after living in the same building as Loki for so long, the Avengers had all become essentially immune to Loki’s ire. “Of course a few punching bags isn’t going to make you forget about Tony. But it isn’t healthy for you to be going around with all of your frustration and aggression pent up. It’s going to explode out of you at the wrong time, towards the wrong person, and you’re going to end up regretting it. The point of the punching bags is to try and get out a little bit of that excess anger so that you can think more clearly. So that you can focus on the things that really matter. Beating the kidnappers to a pulp should not be a priority over getting Tony back in the first place.”

Loki took in a deep breath, and then slowly let it out. “As much as I appreciate the thought behind it, I can assure you that I need no help from you in this matter. I learned self-control long before you were ever even a thought in your mother’s mind, and I do not lash out at those who are undeserving of that.” Well, not usually anyways. But would anyone really be able to blame him if he did take the opportunity to smash those damn kidnappers into a million pieces?

,,,

It was a special skill of Tony’s, that he was able to stay awake for days on end with only minimal negative side effects. Of course, he usually replaced all his blood with caffeine during those times, but he could still go pretty long even without the stimulant. So it wasn’t too difficult for Tony to curl up on the mattress, close his eyes, and slow his breathing down so that he could pretend to be asleep.

Staying awake was easier when he was moving around and actually doing something, but Tony’s body seemed to understand how important this was, because for once it showed some semblance of cooperation with what he needed. So far, every morning when he’d woken up, his dirty paper dishes were always gone.

After lying there for a while, Tony could feel himself being called to actually fall asleep, and he cursed his captor for not just coming in while Tony was still awake. But just when he thought he wouldn’t be able to stay still for another moment without passing out completely, there was suddenly someone else in the small space, but Tony hadn’t heard the closet doors opening, and he wondered how the hell his captor had Houdini-ed his way in here.

A hand reached out to lightly brush across the side of Tony’s face, and even though he knew that it would be best for his plans if he just stayed still, he was too creeped out to do that, and he quickly backed away, accidentally slamming his back into the wall in the process. He had turned the light off to ‘go to sleep’ so he couldn’t make out any of the details of the man in front of him, only that he seemed to be slightly taller than Tony (not that that was a particularly difficult feat), and had long hair. “Who the hell are you?” he gasped out.

“None of your business,” came the cold response.

,,,

Rhodey paced back and forth across the floor, a pained expression on his face. “I should have been here,” he said softly.

Steve reached out to pat Rhodey on the arm. “You couldn’t have known that this was going to happen. You can’t just quit your job to become Tony’s full-time babysitter. And even if you did, he’d probably still wind up finding some way to get himself into trouble. That’s just how he is.”

Loki wanted to snap at Steve to shut up. It’s not like Tony went out of his way to look for problems, things just seemed to happen around him and he had no control over it one way or the other. He thought of how he and Tony had first met, and all the trouble that they’d ended up finding together. Norns, how he missed Tony. He was the only Midgardian who wasn’t entirely insufferable. No, that wasn’t fair to Tony to think that way. Truthfully, Loki knew that he loved Tony Stark.

,,,

“I’ve decided to go on a hunger strike,” Tony explained. “You obviously kidnapped me for a reason, and it’s not ransom, but you haven’t done anything with me yet, which means that you still need me. So I’m going to refuse to cooperate with you at all, and I’m going to refuse to eat anything, until you decide to have an honest conversation with me for once.”

There was a pause, and then his captor had the nerve to start laughing. “All this because I confiscated your watch?” Tony remained silent, which was unfortunately enough of an answer on its own. “You were trying to escape. I couldn’t exactly leave it with you. Though I do applaud your ingenuity. I’ll admit that I allowed myself to get a little too caught up in your reputation.”

Tony leaned back, letting his head thump against the wall. “Why can’t you just tell me who you are and why you took me? It’s not like I’m going anywhere anytime soon, and I’m going out of my mind with boredom.”

His captor gasped. “Of course, how could I be so foolish? A mind such as yours needs some stimulation to keep it sane.”

The next morning Tony woke up with a kindle resting next to him, and he resisted the urge to roll his eyes. He turned it on and saw that there were many different kinds of books downloaded onto it. Textbooks, thrillers, fantasy novels, young adult books. He could also see that it was not connected to any internet at the moment.

He didn’t think it would yield any results, but Tony went to the internet settings anyways. No options came up for nearby routers, and he let out a small sigh of disappointment. At least he actually had something to do with his time now, though, so that was that upside to it all. He opened up one of the textbooks, which was an introductory guide to sign language, and began to quickly flip through the pages, taking it all in. He almost never took the time for himself to just sit and read something interesting all the way through so in a weird way, this was kind of nice.

,,,

It had been an entire month since Loki had returned to Midgard and found Tony to be completely vanished. Nobody had been able to repair Jarvis in that time either, and while the tower was not entirely defenseless, it was weakened quite a bit by not having the AI in charge. And it also served as a depressing reminder of Tony’s disappearance every time one of them started to ask Jarvis for something, before remembering that he couldn’t do anything for them at the moment.

Loki wanted to rampage around the world until he finally found somebody who knew something, but he knew that it wouldn’t be helpful in the end, and he also hated himself for not being strong enough to do it. Burning the world to the ground would make Tony upset with him, and Loki couldn’t stand the thought of Tony being upset with him for anything that was within his control to prevent.

He let out a loud sigh as he watched Clint and Sam fight over who was the rightful winner of the latest round of whatever colorful video game they were playing, and Loki wondered why the others weren’t all as miserable as he was. It’s almost like they’d forgotten all about Tony, or written him off as a lost cause. 

Tony had survived being taken for longer periods of time in the past, but that didn’t change the fact that Loki was terrified out of his mind at the thoughts of what Tony could be going through. 

,,,

“ _You are a dink_ ,” Tony signed out carefully.

His captor blinked once. “I don’t speak in hands.” 

Tony grinned widely. “ _You are a mega dink_.”

,,,

“Brother! Heimdall has seen our shield-brother! Come now so that we may rescue him immediately!”

,,,

Tony sighed. “I was sixteen when my parents died. I didn’t even know whether I was supposed to mourn them or not.”

His captor nodded. “I understand what you mean. My relationship with my parents is rather strained as well. I learned truths from them that I did not appreciate. I found out that I was adopted, and that was why my parents always favored my brother over me.”

Tony reached out to pat the top of his captor’s hand. “Us geniuses never get the respect we deserve, huh?”

His captor’s eyes widened, but then he relaxed, and his shoulders slumped down. “No, I suppose that we don’t.”

,,,

Loki burst through the thick steel door, and found the sight of Tony hanging by his arms from the wall. He was shirtless and covered in bruises and cuts, and his skin was far too pale. Loki destroyed the shackles and then cradled Tony in his arms. “Shh, it’s okay, I’m here now. I found you.”

Tony sighed, and cuddled further into Loki’s embrace. “You know, to this day the only enjoyable kidnapping I’ve had is when you were the culprit.”

Loki smiled as he pressed his face into the top of Tony’s head, not caring that it was a greasy mess. “Well that is certainly a relief to hear. Otherwise I might start to get jealous.” He was holding Tony closely enough that he could feel every tremor that ran through the frail body, and Loki tightened his arms even more. He needed to assure himself that Tony was real and alive and in his arms. The perpetrator, a small group of goons who thought they could torture Tony into making them new technology, were all splattered across the hallway floor, and Tony was safe now. Loki wasn’t sure if he was ever going to be able to let the genius go again.

,,,

“You know, I’ve been here for quite a while now, and I still don’t know anything about you. Why did you take me? Why are you so nice to me? Who are you?”

His captor let out a tired sigh. “I cannot tell you why I took you.” He hesitated for a moment before continuing. He must’ve been swayed by the pleading look on Tony’s face. “I cannot tell you much of anything at all. But I can give you one thing. My name is Loki.”


End file.
